Annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade, NYC (“world’s oldest and largest parade”)

Sydney Opera House, Australia

Dallas, Texas

Dublin, Ireland

Moscow, Russia

Disneyland Paris, France

South Boston, Massachusetts

Kate Middleton present traditional sprigs of shamrock to officers and guardsmen at the base at Mons Barracks in Aldershot, Hampshire, England

*New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh opted to skip this years St. Patrick’s Day parade over gay rights dispute. In addition 3 beer companies, Guinness, Sam Adams and Heineken withdrew their sponsorship from this years parade to support LGBT rights.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to distrust the Anhueuser-Busch owned Goose Island Beer Company. A-B’s anticompetitive practices are well documented, but the fear that buyouts lead to a drop in beer quality seems to be unfounded. Goose Island’s blackberry infused Juliet is still a great wild ale.

Juliet opens with a sour, funky scent. The body is fizzy like a blackberry soda, the thin bubbles quickly dissipate. On the palate Juliet opens with the grains and finishes with lots of acid. Grassy hay covers up the fruit flavor, but that’s to be expected after two years in the bottle. As far as lambic-style beers go, Juliet brings nearly as much complexity as the Belgian originals.

There is a lot of nitpicking I could do here – it’s not spontaneously fermented; it’s not blended from multiple vintages; it lacks the cheesy weirdness from extended wild fermentation – but I’m not sure how much that comes from my reluctance to praise Goose Island. I’ll just say Juliet is very tasty and leave it at that.

It’s National Beer Day, and there’s no better place to celebrate than Chicago.

In 1833, German immigrants established the area’s first brewery. By 1900, the city’s sixty breweries produced more than 100 million gallons of beer a year. Chicago soon became a leading center of “scientific brewing,” boasting a special school, the Siebel Institute of Technology. Above: Workers at Siebel’s Brewing Academy, 1422-24 W. Montana Street, August 1909